


Just Like a Woman

by superglass



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Art, Artist Harry, Au Pair, Au Pair Harry, Bottom Harry, Dirty Talk, Feminization, Fluff and Smut, Harry really wants to be a mother, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Meet-Cute, Museums, Non-Graphic Smut, Paris (City), Period-Typical Homophobia, Poetry, Romantic Fluff, Romanticism, Student Harry, They are so in love, Top Louis Tomlinson, Virgin Harry, Writer Louis Tomlinson, and, but he wants to be a mom so freaking bad, impressionist art, it is NOT mpreg, it isn't bad, lots of references to 60s music, you don't understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 22:41:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superglass/pseuds/superglass
Summary: “Hey!”The man startles up, blinking around before tilting his head up to catch Louis’ gaze. His eyes are wide and innocuous, like a child, and he parts his cherry lips in search of the words on his tongue. In French, jumbled conjugations and a smidge too much of an English accent:  “Oui? Tout va bien?”He shakes his head. And responds, in English: “Yeah, erm— what are you?”An even more frightened look in return; even the little old landlord passing through the courtyard glances up at him like he’s gone crazy. “ Est-ce que tout se passe bien, Mr Tomlinson?”“Oui, oui,” Louis says, waving him off with a flick of his wrist before focusing his attention back on the man and his daughters. Come on, he thinks, I’ve got to get this down before I forget. He repeats himself: “What are you?”Lips spreading into an amused smile now, something sensational, an unbelievably charming smile. Oh god, Louis thinks. He’s probably too charming for his own good. “I’m… um… a person? Is this a trick question?”orLouis is a writer living in Paris for the year. Harry is the charming art student and au pair of the family across the courtyard. Paris 1970s au.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 47
Kudos: 143





	Just Like a Woman

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:
> 
> the poems i used in this fic are NOT entirely my own, neither are the photos I inserted. Each one I either borrowed directly from another poet/was heavily inspired by another poet's work. The poet in question is Frank O'hara. I don't claim his work as my own I am just not a poet and borrowed his (and probably defamed his good work so I'm sorry). See end for more notes on this.

It’s the first voice he hears, a sweet-sounding low rumble amidst the activity of a Monday morning in the farmer’s market, that makes him wake up from a 9am bleariness. “Bonjour!” And then, slower perhaps, like he’s trying to figure out the words in his brain: _“_ Sorry for my accent, I just moved here. _Je peux avoir six tomates… pour la semaine,_ yes, oui, um… how many do you think _,_ my little Juliette? Oh! Mushrooms… _champignons,_ please _,_ let’s do a pack of those _…_ Noelle? Would you— _tu veux des bonbons?_ Agh, don’t cry, love. Oh, dear, I’m sorry, I’m holding up the line, aren’t I?”

He peers over the balcony, through the rose bushes that line the cast iron railings, and surely enough— he could probably pick him out from miles away— a man, a young man really, with his hair grown out like a rockstar might choose to do, standing before the marketplace, trying to conceal his anguish as a child screams. A pale, pretty, long-haired young man with two little blonde girls hanging off of his arms, worriedly choosing too many vegetables out of the stands. 

Louis raises his eyebrows, tapping his cigarette and watching the ashes drift down past the balcony, wondering if they'll end up falling atop the grocer’s bald head or flying with a gust of wind into this man’s curls. _The single tourist with two daughters._

He laughs to himself, and turns back to his cup of espresso. In another life, maybe, he'd have chosen that path: getting married early, having children with the one he loves, naming them lovely things like Juliette and— what was the other girl’s name? Camille?— and moving to Paris, bringing them along to complete mundane tasks like filling Monday morning’s grocery list.

His rented apartment still reeks of marijuana and loneliness from last night, which is why he’s sitting outside now. That, and it's just nice out here, and it feels good to watch the hurried people bustle through town, on their ways to work, going for a run, getting groceries or heading to the park for a picnic. Especially when he himself has close to nothing to do.

People-watching makes Louis feel inspired, something he quite frankly hasn’t felt in months. The little old ladies meandering down the streets, wrapping their shawls tightly around their necks, baskets full of fresh produce for the week. The even older men, strewn over cafe tables, smoking fat cigars and handing out dirty looks to newcomers. The artists, like himself, in their boatneck shirts and old dungarees, wandering around with cigarettes perched between their fingers, looking for a patisserie. He even likes watching the tourists, like this lad, struggle to fall into place in this city, stumble over words and stop short of making any sense. The awkwardness, the gracelessness of it all.

Louis isn’t from Paris. Well, he _is,_ but not like other people are from Paris, people who have grown up sheltered beneath the Baroque walls, who have lived a short walk away from the green river and who grew up wrapped in the sweet scent of the bakery down the street, and the lavender that filters in from the meadow at the edge of town. He almost envies a life like that whenever he sees people speaking fluently, with ease, muffled by a cigarette or applying red lipstick. He envies it whenever he sees the decor on the wall, Art Nouveau and old Renaissance prints of Dukes and Noblewomen, of Jesus Christ’s and Flemish Adam and Eve’s.

Unfair, really, that he could've had a life surrounded by such romanticization, by such artistry. Instead, he was pulled away, by his mother (his lovely mother) to a dreary town in England for most of his childhood and adolescence, stripped of the possibility of a lifetime of art and romance.

So he came back, only for a few months. He has to fill a quota: writing his next novel has been a feat he hasn't overcome yet. He feels sick to his stomach whenever he so much as glances over at his typewriter, where the paper sits blank like a ghost in anticipation. There's something so tiresome about finding a beginning, finding a story to go along with, to bleed into day and night, that he isn't sure how he did it last time— and gained international _success_ for it, at that. It's something akin to a song, a one-hit-wonder that he’ll hear on the radio for a month and then watch it float into the never ending abyss of record shop collections, warped-sounding 7-inch records of pop songs that never truly make it past the top forty.

He thinks maybe he’s hit his peak. Maybe he wasn’t meant to become a writer, or not in the sense of being one of the greats. Rather, he was meant to go along the route of his mum, to focus on family and finding people to love when you didn't have much else. Not maternally; fatherly, protectively, like how he feels when he sees a one-legged dog in an alley, or a kitten on the fire escape in the dead of winter, on the few days it actually snows here.

_You’re way past your mark for that one, Louis._ If he had wanted a wife and kids, he could've fulfilled that desire with the one chance he'd gotten to, back after school ended five years ago when he was still dating a childhood sweetheart who was probably more of a close friend than a girlfriend. But still: Iris, her name, had probably expected that they’d get married. Even though Louis thought himself to be quite a boring boyfriend, never taking her out with the hope that _maybe someone else will,_ he still pitied her, in her plain face and strange, mundane hobbies, like knitting and playing croquet and not listening to music. Maybe he’s lucky that he missed that mark.

It’s something to think about. He’d never tell his mum, not after the last time he saw her and she’d asked _Don’t you want a wife soon, Louis?_ and he’d said _Not particularly. I’d rather like a job._

He puts out his cigarette and flicks the butt of it off of the balcony. The greengrocer below, Mr Dubuisson, has grown a strong disliking of Louis’ presence, growing red in the face whenever he has friends over or drops his cigarette butts down to the street below. It was _one_ time that it actually landed in his vegetable stands— he’s too sensitive, Louis thinks.

Inside, he passes by his mattress on the floor, past this week’s remnants of weed and casual hookups, and to his tiny little desk. There’s a half empty bottle of wine on the wood, the base of it staining the pages of his notebooks a deep purple. He lifts it, takes a swig despite it being nine in the morning, and cracks his knuckles before his typewriter. Today will be the day, he thinks. 

  
  


*

  
  


Today will be the day. 

The next time he hears the slow, viscous, honey-sounding voice, he’s slumped at his typewriter in the same position a week later, staring like a maniac at the one word he’s written: _The._ In another week, he’ll expect himself to start writing out the words, _All work and no play makes Louis a dull boy,_ over and over and over until he runs outside to stab everyone with an axe. It’s just so _frustrating._ He hasn’t yet found anything to write about, even in one of the loveliest cities in the world he can’t find anything, and it makes him feel dumb and juvenile, and not anything like the critically acclaimed author the BBC said he is. 

But the voice comes back, like his ear has been waiting for it to seep through the paper thin walls of his flat. He perks up immediately, leaning in towards the sound, which isn’t coming from below the balcony at Mr Dubuisson’s this time. No– this time, it’s coming from inside the building; either the single long-haired father had followed him home and was knocking outside his door, or his mind was playing some twisted trick on him and he really is going to go Jack Torrence on everyone. ( _Thank god he doesn’t have a wife and kids,_ his mind tells him.)

Instantaneously, he’s outside, in the cool stone corridor that overlooks the courtyard. The building itself is old, settled in its ways for centuries, and yet there, in the center of the cobblestone and the moss that grows between the cracks, on a stone bench next to the flowers the gardener had planted and never came back for, he sits, young and effortlessly charming, with his daughter on his lap. The little girl is crying, sobbing really, throwing her head back in a red-faced whine as he helps her. She must’ve fallen over, Louis assumes, because she’s got a cut on her knee beneath the hem of her frilly white skirt. The young man is gentle with her, wrapping a piece of cloth around her cut all while cooing things like, “I know it hurts _,_ Juliette, _I know._ It’s okay, it’ll get better. _Est-ce que ça va?”_

Louis doesn’t even realize how long he’s been watching, leaning over the stone railing to peer at him as he soothes her, patting her knee and curling a palm behind her head, stroking her blond curls down. There’s a pout in his lip, something that says in a motherly tone: _I’m sorry, darling, I know it hurts. Oh, you poor thing._

And his mind starts to wander. Like, _who is this guy?_ Is he really French, or is his wife French. He bets she’s some tall thin Jane Birkin type, a model who travels the world while he’s stuck here with their two kids. He surely doesn’t look very French. He looks American, even, with his San Francisco outfits and his rockstar hair, which in this light looks like tresses of chocolate-colored curls, pushed back by the dexterousness of his thin fingers.

It wouldn’t explain his English accent, thick and almost masked by the dimness of his low voice.

He’s not privy to the feeling of his stomach fluttering, not even around pretty women, so when the man lifts his head and catches his gaze, he nearly topples over the railing, _splat_ on the pavement below. And he can’t quite see from here, but he’s almost sure that his eyes are a pale green, the color that the river turns in the spring, or of a ripe pear that’s soft to the touch and sweet to pick off of the tree and sink your teeth into. 

He lifts his hand in a small wave: _Bonjour._

There’s a hesitation, the kind that comes when you realize someone’s watching you but you’re not quite sure, the self-consciousness of being admired, and Louis chastises himself for looking like such a creep. But the man lifts his hand, the one which isn’t rubbing smooth circles into the little girl’s shoulder, and gives a small, gentle wave back. _Hello._

It comes to him suddenly. The words fill his brain at miles a minute, and he stands up like he’s been possessed, zombie walking back to his flat down the hall, sprinting to his typewriter. _A single mother. No, a brother. No, a father—_ and he has the idea, he has the words, too many in his brain to be able to type them all out, but he needs more. More of this man, who is practically a stranger to him, sitting in the courtyard like a new flower that’s grown above the rubble. Someone might pick him, smell his sweet scent, and let him go again. 

He runs back out to the inside balcony, overlooking the courtyard again. The man is still there, smiling at his girls brightly, with a grin that could light up the whole city if it tried. Louis simply can’t help it: he calls out, shouting over the railing:

“Hey!”

The man startles up, blinking around before tilting his head up to catch Louis’ gaze. His eyes are wide and innocuous, like a child, and he parts his cherry lips in search of the words on his tongue. In French, jumbled conjugations and a smidge too much of an English accent:  “Oui? _Tout va bien?”_

He shakes his head. And responds, in English: “Yeah, erm— what are you?”

An even more frightened look in return; even the little old landlord passing through the courtyard glances up at him like he’s gone crazy. “ _Est-ce que tout se passe bien,_ Mr Tomlinson?”

“Oui, oui,” Louis says, waving him off with a flick of his wrist before focusing his attention back on the man and his daughters. _Come on,_ he thinks, _I’ve got to get this down before I forget._ He repeats himself: “What are you?”

Lips spreading into an amused smile now, something sensational, an unbelievably charming smile. _Oh god,_ Louis thinks. He’s probably too charming for his own good. “I’m… um… a person? Is this a trick question?”

Louis huffs out a laugh. “No, I mean– what do you do?”

“Oh,” the man says, a crinkle forming between his brows. He looks down at the girls at his feet, one tucked into his shoulder, still crying over the cut on her knee, and the other picking at a dandelion in the cobblestone. He lifts his head again, a curl falling over his eyebrow. “I’m an au pair. Or… like, a nanny, I guess you’d call it.”

An au pair. A babysitter. A nanny. A live-in.

It’s perfect. Louis nods, matches his grin. “Yeah, alright. A nanny.” He glances down at the little blonde girl in his lap, sucking her thumb though she’s probably too old to be doing so. She’s not crying anymore, but her pink cherub cheeks are still stained with fresh tears. She’s staring at Louis, too, in the wondrous way that kids do. “Do you, erm, need a bandage for her?” He gestures to the kid.

The man looks down at the girl, Juliette, in his lap. “Well, I was going to go quickly to the pharmacy to get her one, but…”

“I’ve got some,” he blurts, too quick to help, and he squeezes his eyes shut before reopening them. “I mean… me mum’s a nurse, and she always makes sure I’ve got an aid kit with me when I’m on holiday.”

“Right. Yeah… um, yeah, if you don’t mind?”

_Of course not,_ Louis thinks, nodding quickly and going back to his apartment. On his way out, he scribbles the words in his notebook beside his typewriter, overtop the stains of red wine and doodles: 

_A handsome au pair. Montmartre. Looks like a Roman statue in the Louvre. The Venus de Milo with longer hair. An angel in the courtyard._

  
  


_*_

The first time Louis thought he was in love, it was in his last year of university. He was living in London back then, and it was 1976. He remembers it being springtime, a month before he graduated in May, and it was one of the very precious days where the sun was shining warmly and the air smelled sweet and not of smoke or car exhaust. And he was late to his advanced English literature class where they were in the middle of a course on Aldous Huxley, because his best friend had called him up to meet him for coffee and a scone. He’d just stopped into the city, and Louis hadn’t seen him in so long, and he was so thrilled he couldn’t contain himself. 

They met at a cafe, dressed in thin jackets and flared trousers, in young toothy grins and coffee-stained tongues. As the London wind blew through their hair, Louis could have sworn he’d found everything he needed, right before him… Everything he’d ever wanted. Light touches on his arms, boisterous laughs at his jokes and boyish glances at him while he ordered food or showed him through the park, passing a football to the children on the pitch and tipping the musicians with their hats overturned for change.

His friend was only in the city for the weekend, but it was the most glorious three days of his life, spent showing him around the city to his favorite spots. The cafes during the day; the underground clubs at night. Happy days, filled with sunshine and poppy chords, like something out of a Paul Mccartney song: _I’m in love, and it’s a sunny day._

Back then, he was brash and unabashed, and before he could say farewell to his friend on the way to his taxi cab, he’d gone in for it. An awkward, rushed, one-sided kiss, dry lips on dry lips. And though Louis had pined for the weekend over this boy, in his height and laughter and the way he looked at Louis and the way that Louis loved him, he felt nothing in the kiss. And afterwards, the distance was even larger than it was in the beginning. His friend had stepped back, away from Louis as if he were sick or deranged, and widened his eyes. “Louis, um… I’m not… What the hell was that?” Then: “Are you— are you gay, Louis?”

Louis had shrugged in response, recoiling back into the doorway. “Of course I’m not, like… I… I just thought it felt right, so—”

“I have to go,” came through with a sigh. The avoidance of his gaze was instant, the awkwardness of their interactions which were once so close. “You’re lucky it’s just me, though. If you’d tried that on anyone else, you’d be dead.”

  
  


*

  
  


The next time he sees the au pair, it’s while he’s strolling along the River Seine, trying to find the sunniest spot to read a book. Passing couples with heads in each other’s laps and old men with their easels and oil paints capturing the silhouette of the shadowy cathedral, he sits himself down on the cobblestone and looks out at the river. It’s steady and low today, a pleasant, idyllic image of summertime in the city. The neighborhood itself is quiet but for the distant chatter of children playing and a violin player some ways up the road, playing a rendition of Tchaikovsky to set the scene.

It’s quite funny, really. He’s not even halfway through a page in his book— _Franny and Zooey—_ before someone tumbles past him and shrieks on her way to greet him.

“ _C’est le garçon, c'est le garçon_! Harry!”

“Noelle, you’re being bothersome _,_ lovie, _faites attention_ —”

She is being quite bothersome, tugging at Louis’ shirt sleeve until he gives her his full attention, grinning down at her and pulling a funny face. He loses his page in his book, but doesn’t think it matters, because at once he’s being greeted with the tall, long, fresh-faced ball of endearing nerves and charm— called Harry.

The name suits him, a simple, classic name for a boy who seems the exact opposite of that. A boy who’s unique and strange in his ways, even as he applied the bandage to Juliette’s knee last week, crossing two of the Band-Aids in an ‘X’ shape because he _just wants to make sure it doesn’t come loose,_ because that way he could press his lips on the center and blow a raspberry there until the little girl giggled and swatted at him. Strange in the way he dresses, in wide corduroys and too-small graphic t-shirts— things like Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse screenprinted onto a bright yellow tee, or Keith Richard’s face with the words _TOO TOUGH TO DIE_ written above it. Today it’s the latter, and Louis wants to comment on it, but Harry’s in the middle of saying something to him.

“I’m sorry about her,” he’s saying, struggling to tug Noelle back to his side. Juliette, in the midst of it, breaks loose of his grasp, little blond curls bouncing as she scampers down to the river’s edge, where the water laps up at the cobblestone in miniscule waves. “Juliette! Agh, they’re hard to contain sometimes.”

A tiny, delightful wrinkle forms between his eyebrows again as he tries to balance all of his things in his arms. A thick book cradled between his chest and bicep, a bottle of water and a bag of crisps, a plastic bag with what looks like the silicone hand of a doll sticking out of one side. 

“Do you want to sit?” Louis asks, scooting over to make room between them. Harry’s shoes point inward, pigeon-toed espadrilles, and he looks silly and clumsy with his bow-legged stance holding too many things in his arms. “You look like you could catch a break.”

Without meeting his eye, Harry nods, and plops down on the cobblestone. “Yeah, thanks.” His belongings fall around him in a pile, and Noelle scurries down to join her sister at the river bank. Wistfully, Harry looks after them, a worriedness still threading through his brow, which smooths out when he meets Louis’ gaze.

“Sorry,” he says. “They’re full of energy today. I can’t keep up.” His hand comes up to push his hair out of his face, and he finally smiles, lips spreading as he side-eyes Louis. “I tried to get them to go to a museum, and we couldn’t get through the first room before, _Harry, je m'ennuie, Harry, can I go to the bathroom? Harry, where are the paintings of the princesses?!”_ He shouts it in a poor impression of a little girl’s voice, high and whiny.

“There’s not much interest a toddler can have in Baroque art, love,” Louis says, finally pushing his book to the side and leaning back on his arms to give Harry his full attention, Harry burying his face into his hands embarrassedly.

“I know, I know,” he whines. “But I don’t know where else to take them! We’ve already done everything they like to do. And they start school in two weeks, you know? Well, Juliette is going back, and Noelle is starting anew. It’s that time of year, I s’pose— you know, like, they just get so bored of everything, because they’ve done it all already?”

He rambles, keeping a watchful eye on the girls as they attempt to skip stones or splash each other with droplets of cool water. Louis watches Harry, in the way his hair traces his face, his profile a picture of a straight sloped nose and pouty Cupid’s bow lips, a sharp jawline and tiny ears. 

“When I was little, me mum used to take us to the library ‘cause it’s free, and just tell us to find a book to read for the whole afternoon,” Louis suggests, shrugging, turning back to the river. On it a fishing boat floats lazily by, old men throwing out their lines and ringing them in slowly, their curly mustaches blowing in the wind. They won’t find much here, Louis thinks, that it’s silly to even try. 

“I did try reading to them. I took _Little Women_ out of their mother’s bookshelf, but I don’t think they liked it.” He frowns, pulling out the book by his side. “Well, Juliette enjoyed it, at least I think she did. Noelle didn’t understand it.”

He has a page in the first part dogeared, so sweet to Louis that he grins just at the sight of it. “A bloody shame, too!” Harry continues, sounding affronted. “‘Cause we had just gotten to the part where Jo meets Laurie for the first time.”  
  


“A magical scene,” Louis agrees solemnly, nodding his head in approval. It was a book he read to his own sisters when they were younger, all of whom assumed their own roles as the March girls. “Me sisters used to say I was most like Jo.”

Harry blinks wide eyes at him. “What a compliment!” he exclaims, breaking out into a grin. “My sister said I was a Beth. Maybe an Amy, when I would be bratty.”

As literature, it’s not a common book for men their age to read. Louis had gone through years of schooling and college English degrees without any of his professors mentioning the book, not even once, and especially not when they could instead focus on George Orwell and John Steinbeck. 

“It was mostly ‘cause I was the only one with dreams. Or… a plan, I guess, something to strive for.” He smiles to himself, reminiscing. “I’m a writer, so… I guess I’m more like Jo than anyone else.”

There’s a light touch on his bare arm, where Harry’s fingertips trace in an instant, a light grasp to grab his attention. “I’m an artist, too. S’actually why I came here… Well— not exactly, I s’pose. I’m in school right now, so I’m still taking classes and just living with Juliette and Noelle’s parents.” His touch leaves as quickly as it comes. “That’s why I was so upset about the museum. I’d wanted to see it— I never had before. I mean, um… There’s just so much to learn about art here, you know? Moreso than back home, anyway… It’s, like, built into everything.” His hands wander, trailing over the cool stone beneath them with feather light touches, like the road is his lover, like the breeze is kissing his cheeks pink.

“Yeah…” 

  
Louis clears his throat, watching Juliette and Noelle as they dip their feet into the water, getting the edges of their skirts wet. “I can take you to them… if you want. When you’re not busy with the girls, obviously.” He clears his throat, hands coming up to swipe his fringe out of his eyes. He stares down at his lap. “Like… to the museums. Can go to the Louvre… and, erm, there are a lot of museums for different artists, or periods, like… the _Musée Rodin_ , or _Musée de l'Orangerie,_ which I think has a lot of Monet…”

In his periphery he feels Harry watching him, leaning in closer without tearing his gaze. “Yeah, that’d be— that’d be really lovely.”

A quick turn of his head, and the corners of Harry’s lips turn upwards, leaving a beautiful, syrupy smile in their wake. 

Louis can’t think of a better way to spend his afternoon when Noelle chases Juliette back up to where they’re sitting, the girls throwing themselves at Harry’s torso like happy puppies until he topples back and lets them practically crawl over him, the three of them eliciting happy, shrill, girlish little shrieks and giggles together, droplets of the river’s water spraying Louis where he sits grinning, watching, admiring. 

  
  


*

  
  


It’s not a date. Well— maybe it is. Louis isn’t really sure what to make of it. He won’t overlook the simple charm that surrounds Harry like an aura, putting smiles on everyone’s faces, making Louis go dizzy with emotion. He’s carefree, easy, effortless with his allure, pulling Louis closer with the flick of his wrist as he pushes his hair out of his face or the openness of how he stands with his hands clasped behind his back, spread out and liable, with a broad chest that Louis wants to trace and memorize with the pads of his fingers. 

He just doesn’t know what Harry feels about him. Is it silly to think that Harry might want just the same from Louis that Louis wants from him? For a slow, idyllic love; to be one of the piles of lovers on the Seine’s edge kissing, laying over their books, blankets of tourists discarding their bicycles to greet each other with hugs, with kisses: one for each cheek. 

Harry meets him on the last Monday in August, outside of Juliette and Noelle’s school. “ _Bonjour_ , Louis!” he calls from across the street, waving through a crowd of passers-by, mothers and their children late to school and cars tooling around bumpy roads. Louis waits until a spot opens before practically sprinting to Harry’s side.

Harry does greet him in a hug, wrapping him up in a big, teddy-bear-like warmth and tucking his face in Louis’ neck. “Was getting worried that maybe I gave you the wrong address,” he says. “I’ve got a tendency to mix things like that up.”

He peels off of Louis, grinning down at him. He’s wearing a loudly printed top today, half-unbuttoned to show the bare chest beneath it, and sinfully tight bell-bottoms which spread out wide at his feet to where Louis can’t even see his espadrilles beneath them.

“How are you?” Louis asks, voice cracking slightly, and _it’s just nerves, Louis. Stop being nervous._

Still, he avoids Harry’s eye. 

“I’m good, and you?” They start to walk, up the hill to the end of the block, lazily strolling alongside one another: in no rush at all. Harry elbows him gently at one point, giving him an easy grin. “You’re my whole day today. I’ve got nothing else to do until five, when the girls are done with school. Lead the way, _monsieur!”_

The day goes perfectly. They go to the closest museums, to the cathedrals which are so set in their age-old, long-time ways, engraved into the stone. The buildings and statuary which have all seen the same moon and sun and skies for hundreds of years, over and over again: to whom Harry and Louis are a speck of dust in their lifetimes. 

Harry’s favorite museum ends up being the one filled with Impressionist paintings, with Monet and Renoir, the landscapes of water lilies and Victorian silhouettes overlooking the hill of Montmartre, paintings of casual dinner parties in the park, wide brush strokes and dreamlike views. Lavender fields and bowls of fruit. Dutch portraits of men, of women, of children. Louis watches as Harry fawns over things, staying longer as he examines certain pieces, grabbing onto Louis’ arm as if for leverage. But really to lean in, lips lining the shell of his ear, and whisper, “You see this one? S’like… s’like he painted his dream. Surreal, you know? Like, that right there, the rainbow… symbolizes the fantasy of it all… The presence of it. Like he dreamed it up and painted it from memory.”

Or, at another painting, which he’s pulled to and stands dissecting for nearly fifteen minutes, he says to Louis: “It’s funny how alluring some things are, you know? Some of the paintings here: I’ll pass without a second glance, without care. But ones like this, it’s like… calling my name, you know? Like it’s whispering at me to come closer, to look at every detail. Enthralling.”

The painting itself was a Renoir, of two figures on a golden boat on the Seine, surrounded by a vast blue river and sap green forests. _The romanticism,_ Harry whispers. _Gorgeous._

For lunch, Harry has a simple request: bread. So Louis takes him to a nearby bakery, buys him a baguette to split and a box of croissants _for the week,_ he says, and _give the pain au chocolat to Juliette, she'll love it here._ They pick up a small pack of brie cheese at a shop down the block, and eat it while sitting on the steps towards another lakefront, bony knees touching each other. Harry rambles about how he loves Southern Europe because of its bread and cheese, and Louis rambles about how he loves Southern Europe because of the sunshine (and also the bread and cheese, and the cigarettes).

At half past four, while they’re exiting a sculpture garden of copper and marble statues of saints and angels, Harry checks his watch. “Oh! I should get going now,” he says, facing Louis, curving a frown into his features. “I’m sorry, I'll have to catch a taxi…”

“That's alright.”

“I had a lovely day,” says Harry suddenly, eyes intense and serious. He grabs Louis’ hand abruptly, and Louis can't help but bask in the softness of Harry’s own palm like the warmth of the sun on a beach. Harry takes it in his own hands, swinging it between them childishly. Now, his gaze is almost bashful, coy to meet Louis' own. In a soft voice, he adds, “Thank you for this afternoon.”

“Of course.” Without hesitation. Without any gripes, even as he's watching Harry leave. “Had to get you out of that house for a bit. You’ll go stir-crazy if you’re around children too long. I’d know.”

Harry smiles, remembering how they bonded over this: their love for children, for protecting them and caring for them. Harry had always longed for younger siblings growing up, despised being the youngest of only two, whereas Louis had an abundance of them, too many to count. 

“We should do it again,” Harry says. “Smaller galleries. Or— we could go see a film! I've heard the cinema near our building is screening a Jean-Luc Godard film I haven't seen, but I know about it from the film class I'm taking this year. Have you seen it? We’ll have to check it out. I can’t remember the title… Well anyway— I'm rambling, I've really got to go now or I'll be late.”

In a quickness, a motion that startles Louis, Harry leans forward, pressing a kiss into his cheek. It flips a switch: a flush blooms over Louis’ face, red hot and sacred. Makes him go dizzy in the head, blinking at Harry rapidly as he makes his last farewell before dropping their hands to swing by his sides. 

“See you! _Au revoir! Merci beaucoup,_ again, for today!”

And he's gone, like a wistful dream Louis conjured, swaying his hips as he hails a cab and struggles not to drop his croissants and the journal he'd taken for notes as they scoured the art museums. Leaving Louis like a gust of wind; leaving Louis breathless.

  
  


*

The novel becomes shorter and shorter, running off of dead ends. Perhaps because Louis doesn’t have quite too much to say. The story hasn’t rounded yet, and it isn’t anything incredibly special. He’s toying with ideas, with making it a mystery or a coming-of-age, or perhaps having it be a commentary on something else. He still needs more, he thinks, but at least it’s a start. The first stages are always like this, directionless and haphazard. Streams of consciousness.

He calls his mum for guidance.

“Hello?”

“Hello-oh! S’just me.”

“Louis!” his mum shouts. “How is Paris? Are you finished writing yet?”

He should be, he thinks, since he’s been here for so long now— nearly a year. 

“It’s getting there.”

“Ah, you said that last time,” she scolds, and Louis can picture her wagging her finger in his face or pulling at his cheek. “Is there anything you need, darling? Run out of money yet?”

“Nooo. I’m not that horrible at spending. Besides, nothing much to spend it on.”

“Could spend it on a pretty girl— taking her out on _dates,_ going to _concerts._ You’re young— don’t you do that, Louis?”

He sighs, staring out the French windows. It’s hot today, even with the windows wide open, breeze filtering through in solemn, seldom gusts like the sky is struggling to cough them out. “Something like that.”

She gasps. “Don’t tell me— you’ve met someone?”

He smiles to himself, glancing down at his journal, at the sketch he did of what he could remember of Harry’s face. It’s mostly his lips: the last few times he saw Harry, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at his lips.

“Erm… sort of, yeah.”

“ _Sort of,_ don’t say _that,_ ” she laughs. “Well, what’s she like? Is she French? You know those French girls don’t eat— you need someone who eats, who _cooks—_ god knows how awful _you_ are at cooking— _”_

“She’s not French. Erm— she’s English, actually.” He winces, pursing his lips. “Northern la— girl.” _Girl from the North Country,_ he thinks, and recalls a chorus: _please see if her hair hangs long, if it rolls and flows all down her breast… please see for me if her hair's hangin' long, for that’s the way I remember her best…_

“Louis— that’s brilliant, love! Oh, I’d love to meet her, I’m sure she’s absolutely lovely, huh? What great news— what’s her name? Oh, I’ll have to tell the girls, they’ll be terribly happy to hear about it. When are you coming home? For your birthday, I hope. Right, darling?”

Louis listens as she drones on, without stopping for him to answer any of the questions tumbling through the landline. He listens, and he smiles, and he dreams of how lovely it may be to introduce Harry— Harry, who he’s really only known for a month— to his family, to share his loveliness with his own world.

_Remember me to one who lives there, for she once was a true love of mine..._

  
  


*

  
  


As autumn starts to fall into place around them, painting the trees orange and gold, Louis waits for Harry outside of a cinema in the middle of the city. They’re supposed to meet for supper, as Juliette and Noelle’s parents are home for Juliette’s birthday, and Harry doesn’t have to cook or tend for them the whole night. Coming back from a class, Harry appears in the street before him, dressed like a daffy grandmother in his oversized sweater and knit scarf, in his favorite pair of corduroys and scuffed boots. He greets Louis, who’s stomping his cigarette out with the heel of his shoe, with a press of lips on each of his cheek bones. Each time he does so, his lips trail closer and closer to his eyelids, to his lashes. He wouldn’t be surprised— in fact, he’d be quite endeared— if every time he saw Harry he’d let his eyes slip shut in anticipation of a soft, gentle kiss on each of his eyelids.

It’s a habit of theirs now to see films together. Harry, immersed in French culture, and Louis, embedded in it since early childhood, having grown up with a father who implemented such: French names (Louis for him, after the Kings; for his sisters: Margot, Brigitte, Chloe.), French language classes at local schools, even French cigarettes, the kind which Louis is certain blacken his lungs at half the pace Marlboro’s do.

Harry has an affinity to rewatching the same films, over and over, until Louis can hear him whisper the lines to himself in the back of the theatre. His favorite this month: a twice-weekly screening of _Bande à part,_ as he simply rejoices over the scene where the three main characters break a record running through the Louvre, hand-in-hand, in flashing scenery of the Mona Lisa and youthful smiles.

Their first kiss is outside the theatre. 

Louis leads them through scenic streets, idyllic greens and blues and yellows. They're stepping through a Monet painting in the making— even the locals, who sit out on the streets sipping at late-night espressos and clove cigarettes, look as if they're painted with thick brushstrokes, an impressionistic style with their boat-neck sweaters and skinny wrists and long noses— so inherently Parisian.

They don't hold hands while they walk, although Louis itches to every time their fingers so much as brush with every swing of their arms. 

“I do love that movie as well,” Louis murmurs as they round a corner, the soles of their boots barely making a sound as they stroll through the center of the neighborhood. 

Harry hums in agreement, stopping to look through the window of a bookshop. All of the titles are in French, and he juts his lip out thoughtfully, presumably trying to decipher what they say. Louis hooks his chin over his shoulder, and helps him. “I wish I were bilingual. I wish I lived here all year round. I could learn French and wear scarves, like, all the time.”

Louis hums, his hand resting at the dip of Harry’s waist, palm pressing into his skin through his shirt for a moment only to steer him to keep walking. Harry follows easily, always will.

“Don't you wish you could live here all the time?” Harry persists, pointing up to a balcony where an old woman is leaning over the railing, pulling her dried laundry from the line and tossing them behind her back into a basket. “S’just… perfect, innit?”

And it’s true: the city is perfect, even though Louis knows it well already. It’s not a trend, he tells people. Paris is unique in its timelessness, in its neverchanging scenery. In its people; in Harry.

“Forever,” Louis says finally, nodding his head curtly. His fingers come up, quick and nimble, to brush his fringe out of his eyes. “I’d live here forever, if I could.”

He knows it’s a wish he could never truly fulfill: soon enough, come the new year, he’ll have to return to England. And even if he didn’t, Harry would have to when his term ends, when school ends and their love dissipates, falls to the ground and crumbles like the leaves beneath the soles of their shoes. 

He holds onto this anyway, keeps it to himself when they pick up a bottle of red wine from a small liquor store and drink it until their lips taste sickeningly bittersweet and sensual and their steps grow lax as they walk aimlessly. When they finish the wine, Harry leaves the empty bottle on the steps to a homely apartment building, where a stray cat blinks up at him before curiously sniffing the trash.

It's then, shockingly, that Harry tugs on Louis’ wrist, pulling him into a dark, skinny little alleyway, one so nondescript that no one would notice in passing because the buildings in this part of the city are tipsy, leaning on their sides like pastel towers of Pisa. He gives Louis a look, _that_ look, dark and intense, with berry lips that must taste like Port wine and flushed, roseblush cheeks from the cool air this time of night. Like snow white, Louis thinks, all pale skin and dark curls, and those lips which drive him insane— he’s got to know, he’s got to taste them. The long months in preparation for this moment have withered away at his patience— so he breaks the distance, breaks the silence that drips between them like a prayer.

In no time, Harry is loose and pliant against the cool exterior of the building, falling apart under Louis’ lips, kissing with slow, languid passion. They’re not even worried about being caught, couldn't care less, not when Louis presses warm hands into Harry’s sensitive hips, squeezing them just to feel Harry part their lips and gasp sharply. It's not even inherently sexual— neither of them take it farther than this, kissing, breathing, touching, feeling. It's natural, if anything, to feel like this. 

“Wish I could do this out there,” Louis whispers as they draw back for breath. A few blocks previous, they'd passed by a couple kissing sweetly over a coffee, where the girl was practically sitting in her boyfriend’s lap, out in the open, so blatant and obvious that it was hard to look away. Louis feels selfish that he craves that.

“Wish I could,” Louis swallows, then presses a dry kiss to Harry’s jaw, “wish I could tell everyone about you, let them know you're mine. I want them to know.”

Harry gasps as Louis’ teeth nip at the sensitive spot beneath his ear where his jawline is sharpest, and nods his head, eyes screwed shut, just feeling until their lips meet again. It's sublime; surreptitious. It's them, in a dark alleyway, tasting wine and cigarettes. 

“I love you,” Harry’s lips read. They move at their own accord, but it's true all the same. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he breathes.

“Love you,” Louis replies, quieter, then presses a soft shush into Harry’s lips before pulling back. An easy grin, a warm, blown-out pair of the prettiest eyes Louis’ ever seen. 

In the short distance, through the back entrance of a restaurant, a chef steps out of a heavy door to smoke in the alley. When he notices the two men, huddled up against the cool brick wall in the night time, he starts to shout at them in French— words they can’t recognize, and can’t even think about caring for.

Louis just grins wider, grabs his wrist, presses a last, fleeting kiss on his lips— rebellious, outrageous now that they’re being watched— and they run off, back through the streets, the flashing yellow street lamps whirring past them as they sprint.

Out of breath and shaking with laughter by the time they’ve made it to where they started, the greenish river in the park, they collapse on a nearby bench, clutching at their bellies, at each other’s hands— loving one another.

  
  


*

On a Saturday in October, Louis watches Harry play with the girls in the courtyard. He’s laying on his back on the stone bench, his journal open on his chest, face turned away. It’s early morning and it’s the same morning as always, waking up, watching the girls with Harry, watching Harry clean or cook or read to them. Most of today has been taken up by the latter.

It’s important for Juliette and Noelle’s father, Monsieur Toussant, to teach the girls at least a lick of English. It’s the sole reason why they hired Harry, though he has limited French vocabulary. His favorite pastime to do so is to read to the girls, even if the books are too small or too big or incomprehensible. Louis listens as well as Juliette and Noelle, all joining in for, presumably, the same reason: it’s less so about the book itself than it is about the sound of Harry’s voice as he reads it.

Today’s book is _The Secret Garden,_ same as last week. Harry lay on his back on the cobblestone, soaking up the sunshine gleaming through the courtyard, with Juliette and Noelle on either side of him doing the same.

He reads, enacting the character’s different voices with the ease of a thespian, a confidence that makes Louis smile up into the sky.

_“ “Springtime’s comin,’’ he said. ‘Cannot tha’ smell it?”_

_Mary sniffed and thought she could._

_“I smell something nice and fresh and damp,” she said._

_“That’s th’ good rich earth,” he answered, digging away. “It’s in a good humor makin’ ready to grow things. It’s glad when plantin’ time comes. It’s dull in th’ winter when it’s got nowt to do. In th’ flower gardens out there things will be stirrin’ down below in th’ dark. Th’ sun’s warmin’ ‘em. You’ll see bits o’ green spikes stickin’ out o’ th’ black earth after a bit.”_

_“What will they be?” asked Mary._

_“Crocuses an’ snowdrops an’ daffydowndillys. Has tha’ never seen them?””_

“I’ve _never_ seen a daffa-lily,” interrupts Juliette, pouting. She's grown parts of Harry’s accent when she speaks in English.

“Me neither,” says Noelle, copying the same tone as her sister.

Harry sets the book down on his chest, having grown just as tired and lazy as the girls. He stretches his arms above his head, spreading out his long torso like a cat. “I’m sure you have.”

“ _Non!_ Haven’t.”

“They grow every spring! They’re the yellow flowers.” Sounding indignant and eager to prove himself, he adds, in French: “ _Jaune. Fleurs jaune.”_

“Don’t listen t’Harry, girls,” Louis says, grinning over at them. It’s a pleasant image, watching the pile of them sit in the morning sun, nowhere to go, nothing to say. He teases: “ _Il est fou.” He is crazy._

The girls giggle at him, popping their blonde heads up at remembering his presence. 

“Heyyy,” Harry whines. “What’d you say?”

“I told them you’re smart and funny and beautiful,” Louis lies, biting back a grin as Harry furrows his brows at him. 

“Fibber,” he says. “You fib.”

  
  


On another stray weekend, they find themselves driving out in a rented cab, the girls bouncing excitedly in the backseat, to a meadow twenty minutes outside of the city. It’s the last warm day of fall, Harry predicts, and they’ve got to make use of it what they can.

They spend the day amidst the fresh-smelling lavender, the poppies and tulips and bluebonnets and sweet peas. Harry borrows a transistor radio from the girls’ parents; Louis borrows a football that’s left astray in the courtyard. Where a patch of green grass opens up, he dribbles the ball with Juliette, teaching her how to kick if she wants to end up on an Olympic team or play in the World Cup. Juliette tries, but ends up falling after each attempt, muddying the knees of her dungarees. 

Harry, meanwhile, plays with Noelle, teaching her how to draw a flower she picks from the wildflowers. She has a small pack of crayons with her, only four colors with half of them broken, and she draws it in the back of Harry’s sketchbook, behind his master-studies for class.

“ _Très bon!_ It’s beautiful, Noelle!” when she starts to draw the black and white outline of a cow in the distance chewing on the grass and the Queen Anne’s Lace.

They stay until the sun sets and Juliette gets tired of running around chasing the cows and the butterflies, and Noelle gets tired of following her sister. Harry clips them into the backseat and smiles at them, enamored with the simplicity of how they fall asleep so easily. 

Louis presents Harry with a makeshift bouquet of wildflowers he picked while he wasn’t looking, watching as Harry teasingly swoons with his hand on his chest. “ _Monsieur,_ you shouldn’t have! I’m just a lady!”

“You’re _my_ lady,” Louis says, grinning as he keys up the cab. With a swift glance back at the sleeping girls, Harry leans forward, pressing a kiss to his temple, one that makes Louis certain Harry’s lips are softer than the petals of the flowers clutched between his fingers.

  
  


*

Poor and hungry men, they spend their nights after the girls have gone to bed and Harry is able to sneak out unnoticed, scouring late-night cafes, coffeehouses and strange-smelling cabarets in seedy neighborhoods. It’s rare they’re ever paid any mind to: the locals will send one lackadaisical glance towards them, sitting in dark corner booths against the wall in hours-long conversations, and go swiftly back to what they’re doing. _Tourists,_ they’d think of them, in their silly clothes and English accents. Harry says that’s what makes them unique. 

In these places, they’re safe, surrounded by people but not people who care, not watchful eyes or strange, judgmental looks. The youth here understand them, move fluently and without care, wear bold things and stomp with big boots on the same floors their forefathers sat to drink coffee and write essays on. They’re outsiders, watching from the sidelines of another person’s story, wallflowers of an open party.

Yet, over time, a love which was once so loud, once so out in the open— kisses on cheeks in the parks, hugs in the courtyard, performative acts of adoration— starts to shy away, creeping back into its quiet shell. 

It happens late-night, waiting for the Métro on the way home from a nightclub. They're drunk, uninhibited, hanging neck-from-neck on the platform. Louis’ hands wrapped around Harry’s broad back, Harry’s face in his neck, hair pulled into a bun from the heat of the nightclub, to dry the sweat that pooled at the back of his neck as he danced to an American song. They sway like twin branches in the wind, moved by an unknown force, pulled together magnetically.

And the men— hooligans, as Harry would call them on other nights, on nights where they are happy and loud and laugh these sorts of things off like they mean nothing— are ruthless, shouting at them with cruel words until they peel apart and cower in fear. 

Louis hasn't stayed long enough in France to understand the slang nor the thick accents they use, but he supposes the language doesn't make it any different than if he were to be with Harry back at home. They’re skinheads, or maybe they’re called suedeheads, or maybe, Louis says later on the subway, they’re called _fucking assholes who don’t deserve to live a happy life,_ or, Harry says, _fucking assholes who are born from hatred and now can’t escape it, so they impede on other people’s love to make up for it._ Because they wish they were _us,_ Harry says, they wish. They _wish._

And Louis can’t help it when he grows mean. When his words become harsh and cut through Harry’s optimism like a knife.

  
They’re outside their building, where the greengrocer’s shop is boarded up and the stands are empty but for a stray tomato that started to mold.

“They don’t wish to be us, Harry! That’s the fucking _point._ They _hate_ us.” He throws his arms up in the air, as if that will help his point. It makes him look exasperated, tired, like he’s ready to pull his hair out. “They fucking _hate_ you, they hate your hair, they hate your clothes, they hate how you’re happy and they hate how _you_ like _me,_ because the last thing they want to see is two of people like us together. Jesus fucking Christ.”

Harry stands, a fair distance away from Louis, underneath a Roman archway, looking blue in the moonlight. He’s silent for a long moment, arms crossed in front of his chest, eyes staring dejectedly at the stone beneath his feet. “I don’t like that you think that way. Seeing through their eyes, like.”

“Well, it’s true. They’re fuckin’ Nazi punks, Harry. We’re lucky we hopped the train in time before they threw us down the tracks to get fuckin’ run over.”

“Louis!” He takes a step back, closer and closer to the courtyard, to a safe haven. “We weren’t even doing anything. People aren’t heartless enough to kill like that. They… they shouted, just for show. Just to have a laugh at us. And it’s _fine._ You’re… you’re taking it too seriously.”

Having had enough of the argument, Louis shrugs. “Whatever makes you sleep at night,” he says, and watches as Harry grows aloof and dismal, giving him an icy cold shoulder as he flees to his room without a word goodnight.

And after that night, when they leave the security of their building and expose themselves to the world which is good at heart, yet cruel in nature, they stay apart mostly, keeping a safe distance, sharing their love through mere glances at each other over Juliette and Noelle’s heads or barely-there brushes of their pinkies as they walk side-by-side.

Louis writes in his notebook one night:

_As I walk home alone (because you love me)_

_I pass a group of deaf people_

_who don’t hear me— they laugh_

_at a joke told in sign language_

_and silently I love you._

  
  


*

  
  


At nighttime, Harry wakes up past curfew, slips out of Juliette and Noelle’s flat to crawl across the courtyard, up to Louis’ floor. Not for sex— for company, mostly. Harry will bring over records, or stories from his day with the girls, bellyaches about the mother and father who, though wealthy, never seem to pay much attention to either of their daughters, who quite underpay Harry for the work he gives: cooking, cleaning, watching after the little girls, taking them to school and helping with homework, all while completing his own classes and spending time with his— with Louis. (What were they? Close friends? Boyfriends?) 

Louis will indulge in him: will listen to his music, Joni Mitchell albums and quirky 1920s 7-inch jazz records from antique shop bins; will respond to his stories with his own, and laugh until their ribs hurt or kiss until their lips get tired; he’ll complain with him, make pointless threats to Juliette and Noelle’s parents, raising his fist like a senile old man on a front lawn saying, _Oi! Monsieur et Madam Toussant! Quit being dickheads, would you? Give it a rest!!!_ Until Harry giggles into his chest and his face blooms into a beautiful smile for the rest of the night.

It’s in Louis’ bed that he tells Harry about his novella, which is slowly but surely starting to form. And Harry takes his paints over, trusting Louis enough to leave the oil paints and canvases in his possession because _if I left them in mine, Noelle would get her fingerprints all over them._ He paints while Louis writes, while they stay up perhaps too late into the night, just two poor artists learning to work around each other. Drinking red wine, chain-smoking until two in the morning, until Harry comes up behind Louis’ chair and presses a kiss into his hair, murmuring, “Come on, now, bed time for us,” in a sweet, alluring voice that draws Louis to bed quicker than he could say Harry’s name. 

Beneath their covers, Harry tells him about his desire to truly fulfill the responsibilities of being something like an au pair, like somewhat of a parent to Juliette and Noelle; a mother. He says he feels so bad that their mother is absent, gone on long work trips overseas or preoccupied when she is home. Harry, like Louis, shares a deep connection with his own mum, one which shaped his lonely childhood. To watch after Juliette and Noelle makes him feel like he’s done something for them, like he’s filled their childhood with at least an ounce of what a childhood should be like in his mind: being cared for, being looked after. 

“Like a mother would,” Louis mumbles sleepily one night.

“I’d like to be a mother,” says Harry back, tracing the side of Louis’ face with careful precision, as if he’s drawing into his skin with the tattoo needle at the tips of his fingers. “Sorry, I… S’weird, innit? That’s not something… people just say.”

“S’not weird,” Louis assures, opening his eyes to watch Harry watch him. He smiles, in what hopes is kind and comforting. 

“I just… dunno. Feel like… drawn to it. If I were… you know, a woman, I’d have a huge family. Like,” he swallows, eyes still not meeting Louis’, instead falling somewhere behind his shoulder, “like a ton of kids. Like six of them. Or seven. And, like, make them Sunday roast every week. And breakfast every morning. Wake them up by, like, going to their rooms and singing the good morning song from _Singing in the Rain._ And… if I had daughters, like Juliette and Noelle, I’d braid their hair and put them in frilly dresses. And with my boys I’d watch them play football in the yard with their dad,” and Louis can’t help but think _with me_ , “and I’d scold them for teasing their sisters.”

“‘Course. Little boys are cheeky fuckers.” This earns a fit of laughter from Harry and a wide, teary grin. 

“Sorry, s’just. I think it’s so special, you know?”

Louis doesn’t like thinking about how well Harry and his own mother would get along. He doesn’t like thinking about what it would be like to start a family with Harry, if only they could have lovely little girls like Juliette and Noelle. Juliette’s fast-paced liveliness, sporty dungarees she wears on the weekends; Noelle’s gentleness, her kindness, the way she falls asleep in Harry’s arms in the park while they’re having a picnic or fingerpainting with watercolors Harry gives her. He doesn’t like thinking about how vulnerable Harry becomes when they’re in bed, even if they’re not touching. He especially doesn’t like thinking about how in the morning, he has to leave the soft cocoon they make for themselves every night. 

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


“Louis?” comes in a whisper, a murmur between the sheets. “Can I ask you a question?”

It’s nearing the end of November. They’re closer now, curled beneath layers of Louis’ blankets and the quilts Harry brought over. The wind outside is chilly and biting, turning their cheeks and ears and noses red in its wake, but here they’re warmer than ever, feeding off of each other’s breaths and kisses.

“Of course, darling.”

  
Harry shuffles closer beneath the sheets, facing him. His hands are clasped beneath his cheek, in a sleeping position, but he’s wide awake. Louis can tell by his alertness, by the way he can see Harry lazily blink as he studies him.

The question he asks is quiet and muffled, and Louis leans in closer to hear. Their noses touch, cheeks pressed against the same pillow, eyes going dizzy trying to concentrate on one another. “What’s that?”

It’s a barely-there whisper, vulnerable and almost frightened. “Do you want to make love to me?”

Louis swallows. _Oh god,_ his brain screams. _Oh god, oh god, oh god._ He’s probably too in love with Harry for his own good, he thinks when he has enough sense in him to form a coherent thought, especially when he feels the big palm of Harry’s hand weigh down on his jaw, its favorite place, thumb tracing circles into his cheekbone. Louis thinks: he couldn’t have asked that question to anyone who loved him more. Bleeding the words into Harry’s lips, he whispers back, “ _Yes, I do… I do…_ ” 

He hears it when Harry swallows thickly, and feels it when he nods against his lips. “What would you… what would you do?”

And he hears the end of the question in his brain, in Harry’s voice, filling out the silence that follows. _What will you do when you make love to me?_ He squeezes his eyes shut, the senses too overwhelming even in the dark. Too overwhelming to think about what Harry will look like naked, about how he’ll feel when Louis slowly, gently takes him apart, about how his saccharine voice will sound— would its pitch lower, to a bass-like groan in Louis’ ear? Or will it thin out, high and light as a feather, tiny mewls that escape his lips?

“I… I’d…” Louis feels lightheaded, muddled when he opens his eyes and hears the question repeat in his brain like a beautiful broken record. “I’d… what would you want? ...For me to do, I mean...”

  
The answer is lame, but Harry doesn’t falter, pressing his lips to Louis, closing that gap if only for a moment. “Just… just want to be yours, Lou. Your boy… or…” Even quieter, if that’s possible: “...or your girl. Or… or whatever, I mean. Just… yours.”

_Yours,_ Louis thinks. _Mine._

“I’d… I’d kiss you,” he whispers, a shaky start, and seals the promise with his lips. “Everywhere, I mean… Your neck and… your collarbones. Your chest.” Between them, beneath the quilts which are starting to get too hot, something rustles, and it takes Louis a long moment to realize Harry’s touching himself, running his fingers along the list Louis’ making, pretending the soft press of his own fingertips are Louis’ lips. And he continues, spurred on by this, blinking over at Harry in the dark. “Kiss your stomach… and… and your thighs, and your hips where they’re soft, and… and your knees. But mostly… Reckon your thighs, mostly.”

At that, he hears Harry’s breath falter before he exhales a sweet sigh. Slowly, he pivots until he’s flat on his back, his fingers running along his thighs beneath the sheets. 

Louis swallows, before continuing. “I’d spend hours there if I could… just… kissing you. Making you feel good.” Harry nods against the pillow frantically, asking Louis for more. “Would you like that?”

“Yes!” Harry exclaims, too quickly, face crumpling in the dark room. “Feel so good,” he mumbles.

“You’d want that? For me to… lick you out. Turn you over and just…” Louis shuffles up the bed until his lips line the shell of Harry’s ear, his curls tickling his nose as he does so. “Spread you open, get you ready for me, yeah? And… I’d make sure you’re all comfortable, all wet and pretty for me, before I’d…”

And he doesn’t even have to say the words for Harry to tremble and bob his head up and down, _yes, oui, please, Louis—_ too overwhelmed to verbalize the words. 

“You’d want that?” Louis asks, on the cusp of teasing the boy, who’s already falling apart without Louis even having to touch him.

“God, yes,” comes in a lower sort of groan, a juxtaposition from the higher whines he omits. And that’s just what Harry is: a juxtaposition. An enigma. A confusing, dreamlike state that makes Louis go absolutely dizzy with emotion for, like an amusement park ride that looks like a daydream. “Want you to… inside me, want it inside—”

“Yeah?” Louis eggs him on, and he’s so hard himself but— he’s got to watch Harry finish, which he’s sure is soon, with the way it looks like Harry’s far gone already. “Want me to… to make you messy? F’me?”

That seems to do it for him, climactic really, as he arches his back off the mattress and let’s go, mouth dropped in a silent moan. Louis pulls back to watch, peeling off the blankets a bit too late for them not to be spoiled. Harry, shirtless beneath the sheets, one arm thrown over his eyes. He’s panting, his pretty stomach rising and falling rapidly, sticky all the way up to his chest. He crawls over, tentatively, knees bracketing Harry’s thin hips.

He leans down to steal his lips, taking them back between his own. They’re softer, tasting slightly of toothpaste from when they’d gone to bed initially. Harry’s hands come to trail over Louis’ torso, for the first real time, unabashed, unconcerned, going wherever he wishes. As Louis kisses him, Harry pulls him off languidly, with slow, relaxed tugs. When Louis trails his spit-soaked lips down to Harry’s neck to suck a bruise beneath his jaw, Harry watches himself leisurely, twisting his wrist experimentally to pull a reaction out of Louis. He whispers, dirtily, quietly, more of a prayer than a request, “ _Please come on me, Lou, please…”_ And in the end, when Louis comes over Harry’s stomach, their lips pressed together in a suffocating kiss, he swears he must see heaven: that this is the place everyone longs to be.

  
  


*

“I’m just not sure exactly. I’ve… I don’t have enough to make a story, you know? Everything I’ve written… s’like… little vignettes. Like small things. Not a _story._ A _novel.”_

“So don’t make a story.” Rolling over onto his front, face illuminated by the morning light from the French windows, pillow creases in his cheek. “Make it a collection of them. Like… little essays. Or poems. Or songs, or whatever.”

A pause. “That’s it, Harry. That’s exactly it.” An unexpected, happy shriek. “Oh my god! You’re brilliant, darling.” 

Harry’s giggles into the morning air as Louis presses kiss upon kiss into his face: his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids, his nose, his lips.

  
  
  


*

  
  


On Louis’ birthday, a month later, they make love.

Harry is timid and frightened through the start of it, admitting to Louis in a soft voice that it’s his first time, that he’s not sure exactly what to do, that he just wants to make him feel good. He tells Louis that his whole life, he was told to wait until you find the right one to have sex with, and that he thinks— truly believes— Louis is the right one. “ _In France they kiss on Main Street,”_ Harry says against Louis’ lips, smiling sweetly.

It’s a slow but certain process. The light from Louis’ candles cast a tender glow on their skin, the only thing that outlines Harry’s lovely nude figure in the dark. “Y’look like David,” says Louis, unexpectedly. “Like… carved out of stone.”

Harry laughs breathily, gazing up at Louis with light eyes— _I’m yours. I’m your statue, your figure to carve out of the marble. Make me yours._

He does, and it’s a pillowy nirvana, a blissfulness that he doesn't think could ever be matched. It’s a few slow pushes into Harry, who stares up at Louis in marvel the whole way through, like he’s remembering every detail of the way Louis’ neck looks, the way he feels pressing into him, his mussed hair and how his face changes as Harry gives into him. Louis falls in love with the way Harry’s legs fall open around him, by the way he loosens up until he’s whimpering and groaning into the safety of Louis’ flat. He falls in love with how responsive he is, when he pinches his nipple or bites his neck, how he squirms beneath him and arches his back sinfully. 

He falls in love with the sleepy, postcoital Harry, who waits to be cleaned up of their mess, who closes his thighs shut and relishes in what’s left of Louis inside him, filthily, he says, _feel so dirty._ How Harry attaches himself to Louis' side in sleep, breathing velvety breaths into Louis’ skin through the night. 

In the morning, Louis kisses Harry awake, pulling a slow orgasm out of him before they shower together, wash each other’s backs with soapy water, kissing each other on the top of their spines. He sends Harry on his way to Juliette and Noelle’s— their parents have invited him for Christmas mass, and have left him a present or two under their tree. 

The morning is perfect, though still wintry and chilly. His cheeks burn red as he trails down past the courtyard where the snow hasn’t been shoveled out yet and into the small office his landlord stays in.

His landlord is an old, grumpy man named Pierre, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever seen him without his silly newsboy cap on his white head and a lengthy cigarette clutched between his fingers. His office is small and square, with a lonesome desk in the center and one chair. On the far wall, the mailboxes for each apartment stand, Louis’ name in one of them. He goes to check his mail before turning back to Pierre, wishing him a Merry Christmas.

He’s given a _Joyeux Noel, Louis_ and a stern look in response. 

“Louis,” says the old landlord. “ _Vous avez une semaine.”_ He points a single, knobby finger to the ceiling. _You have one week, and then I need you out of here._

It startles Louis, rattles him to his bones. Like a great big fool, he’d been so wrapped up in the romanticized life of living in this city, so muffled by his blissful life living alongside Harry day after day, that he forgot this isn’t permanent. Even his poems, which he’s been so obsessive with writing each day even about the most mundane things, glorifying each and every part of his simplistic life (in love), have not reminded him that there is an end goal, which is going home after all is said and done. That nothing, truly, is permanent.

  
  


*

  
  


He tells Harry suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment of weakness. Harry’s in the middle of explaining something to him, repainting a piece for his masters class. 

_The Seine and la Grande Jatte – Springtime 1888_.

“I’m not used to pointillism,” Harry’s saying, mixing a sap green in his palette with a deep purple. “It’s not because I’m impatient… I think s’just, like… got a lot to do with color theory, you know? Understanding what things look like far away, too, not just close up. S’like… s’weird… Dunno. But he was great at it. Did you know–”

“I’ve got to leave.”

It’s blurted out, spat onto the creaky hardwood floors. Harry, sitting on his stool at his easel, straightens up, glancing over his shoulder casually. It irks him when he’s interrupted, because it’s rare that he’s ever comfortable enough to ramble on and on, to speak without care— now Louis feels even more horrible. “Okay. Where? Do you want me to come with you?”  
  


“No, I mean… I’ve… Got to leave. Paris. I’ve got to go home soon.”

The silence, even as Joni Mitchell’s _Blue_ blares a slow, solemn song through their record player, is deafening. It feels like the rain, even though the day is bright and sunny. It feels like the iciness of snow on a day in January, where you’re quite frankly tired of snow, but it keeps coming. It fills Louis with a dread to watch Harry shift on his wooden stool, wiping his brush on a dirty towel before taking off his apron. He’s slow, painstakingly careful in his movement, a calm before the storm.

“How soon? Like a month?”

“Like tomorrow.”

“You’re being serious?” he asks in a low voice. “Back home to— to England?”

Louis nods. “I… I’ve been sent here to write me next book. You knew that,” he adds softly. “And… but my publisher needs it by the New Year. I’ve got to go back, you know… To my life. There.”

“God, no, I thought— I was certain you’d have more time, I thought— you could stay longer. You can, can’t you?”

“I—” He exhales softly, not exasperated but rather uncertain. “I can’t, Harry. Me lease is only for a year. That was the agreement.”

A deep, trembling frown forms on Harry’s face. He furrows his brow. “What, so… was this just like, a holiday for you?”

His mouth drops open, but no words fall out. Harry, in an instant, grows cold, hostile, yet still calm: collected, as he collects his things. His paints and the canvases he’s left in Louis’ flat. His clothes off the floor, tossing them over his shoulder or shimmying into his denim jeans and wooly socks. His books, the ones he needs for school when he uses Louis’ bed as a soft, quiet place to read. His satchel, which holds everything for him, overstuffing it with baggage, with everything he shared with Louis.

“Harry—”

“You don’t, like, have to explain. Just— I get it. I get it.” He takes a breath, squeezing his eyes shut, standing bow-legged at the door, his hair falling messily out of the loose plait he let Louis put in his curls. “I get it,” he repeats in a small voice, as if he’s trying to convince himself.

“Can we… can we at least talk about this? It’s not over. Just because… Just because I’m going home doesn’t mean s’over.”

And though he believes Harry brightens up any place he’s in, even the humdrum London he’ll have to go home to, he can’t imagine knowing the boy anywhere else but between the walls of this building, on this hill, in this city.

He hears himself talking before he can even make out the words in his head. “...and you’ll be done with school soon anyway, and when you get your degree, we can… we can move back here, yeah? It won’t be that long. We just… we just have to make some changes, and then it’ll be fine, yeah?”

It’s dead silent. Even the record player stitches over dead notes, making tiny buzzes every few seconds like ticker tape.

“I’ll… I’ll come back,” Louis says, blinking up at Harry. He’s on his knees now, kneeling on the mattress as if in prayer. 

“When?”

That he can’t answer. He hesitates. He falters. 

Harry tilts his head curiously, eyes wide and— and sad. Crestfallen. Forlorn. A slight tremor in the pout of his lip. He gathers his things again. “No, s’alright. Okay… S’okay.”

And he’s gone.

  
  


*

Going back to the UK, though it’s home and always will be, feels like leaving a paradise vacation to come back to a grueling factory job, trudging through grey rain-drenched streets with a deep frown on his face. Everyone here looks unhappy, especially the older the people get, the less life they have to live for. In Paris, the young ones wear loose smiles and hold themselves with a brash carelessness. Here, people are uptight, noses crinkling at you, eyes slightly narrowed every time you passed them on the street.

He’s sitting nervously in a publishing office, mahogany wood and framed pictures of books he’s been told to read. In his lap: the manuscript for his own, the collection of poems. His publisher, a heavy-set man named Mr Bernard, bursts through the door at once, carrying a waft of department store cologne and cigarettes with him. 

“Louis Tomlinson. What a lovely surprise,” he says in his low posh accent, breathing harshly from his walk back. “You know, I picked your book up last month and reread it, because it had just been so long, and— that was really something special you had there. _Wow._ Thrilling. I didn’t want to put it down, truth!”

He clasps his hands together on his desk, attempting a smile with his thin lips and beady eyes. “So, what have you got for me today? A thrilling sequel? A murder mystery?”

Louis looks down at the manuscript in his lap, a wrinkle forming between his brow. “Erm…” And he grips it between his fingers, feeling the weight of papers in his hand. Instead of explaining, he hands it over, straightening his back in confidence. _This is my work. I’m proud of it._

Mr Bernard takes the text, staring down at it dubiously before opening the book at its soft binding. He flips through the pages, filled with prose, with gentle, romantic settings, with love. Louis might as well have finished every page with a kiss, with a kiss as soft as the ones Harry would leave on his eyelids, on the top of his head, on his bare shoulder in bed, on his hip-bones and his lips.

“Poetry,” says Mr Bernard, in a voice that’s uncertain, eyes wavering as he pushes down his reading glasses. He gives a wary glance to Louis. “Very… different.”

Louis nods. “Yeah. Well, you know what they say. Think outside the box.”

A tightlipped smile is given in response, as Mr Bernard flicks through the pages, humming as he reads. “Some of these are very good. Very detailed. Um— wow. Lucky woman.”

“Yeah.”

He puts the book down after the last flick through, tossing it like a magazine on the desk before him. He holds his face in his hands, contemplating. “Louis— you have a lovely prose. And… your diction… incredible. I’m not much of a poetry snob, and I don’t publish many…”

He takes a moment, removing his glasses again. Louis waits with bated breath, boring holes into the blank manuscript which lay untouched on the table before him. 

“You spent all that time writing this?” he asks.

Louis nods, releasing a heavy breath. “Yes, sir. It’s… very important to me.”

He glances out the window, to the clouds that drift by untouched, and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. In the split second he does, he prays. _Please take it. Please. Please God. I know you hate me, but please…_

Because after months of silence, being ripped apart from Harry without another word, he needs something to make up for it. He knows this is the only way he can make up for it, other than being there with him and getting on his knees and begging for mercy.

“Alright,” says Mr Bernard finally. “I'll take it.”

Louis gets whiplash, and nearly topples out of the uncomfortable office chair. “You will?!”

“Yes.” Mr Bernard rummages in his pockets for a cigarette, lighting it carefully as he eyes Louis. He points a finger in his face. “If you were a new author, I'd say— absolutely not. But I like you, and I like your work. Maybe this will open up a new market for us.”

He looks down at the manuscript. “I'll have it printed in paperback first, yeah? Then hardcover. Maybe by… this spring? I'll keep in touch.”

Taking this as his cue to leave, Louis stands up, reaching his palm out to shake. “Thank you so much, sir— really, you don't know how happy this makes me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Now you've got to go tell your girlfriend, huh? Let her know all about it.” He gives Louis the warmest grin he can muster. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

  
  
  


*

For a while in the weeks that follow leaving Harry, Louis is in denial, lying prostrate on his bed like a dead person, mind clouded with thoughts of _what is he doing right now,_ and _is he mad at me,_ and _of course he’s mad you idiot, he fucking hates you._ And for a while in the silence, in the sad gloomy days of waking up in a grey apartment in a grey city, he doesn’t even get up to leave the house. He can’t make tea or coffee anymore, as it never tastes the way it did when Harry made it. He doesn’t eat much more other than TV dinners and fast food because even a glance at the supermarket stands of fresh fruit and vegetables reminds him of the first day he looked down at Harry, from his quaint little balcony, and watched him pick out from the greengrocer’s produce. He can’t pass by bakeries without thinking of Harry’s strong appetite for bread, which despite the mornings he’d spend going on runs through the park always left behind a slight softness to his stomach and hips and thighs for Louis to rest his head on. 

In fact, he starts to see little pieces of Harry in everything he does, which sounds cliche and sappy, but true all the same. When he turns on the telly and sees an old film screening and a man with a handlebar mustache, thinking about how Harry would take his long hair and pretend to have one himself. Or when he walks down the streets of rainy London and sees a grandmother dressed in a ridiculous printed sweater like the ones Harry would get from a flea market. Or when he passes by a mother and father, swinging their little daughter between their arms as they stroll happily along, and thinks that in another life, in another timeline, in another existence, himself and Harry could be like that, without any qualms. 

He tries writing to him, but falls short of putting the right sentiment in each letter. He writes lengthy, ten-page letters, rambling about how much he misses him, how much he wishes he hadn’t left. He writes page upon page of angry, resentful rants, fountain pen trembling beneath his indignant fingertips. He writes letters more to the city itself than to Harry, and then he writes letters about how Harry overpowers the city, standing atop it and looking down at all of the tiny Parisians like a kinder, prettier Godzilla. Letters to every part he loves about his boy, his au pair: one dedicated to his hair, to his nose or his eyes, or his tiny ears and the one night they attempted to pierce them, to his thighs and the thousands of kisses Louis would leave there.

Passing by museums, churches, wide open fields that were once meadows or vast forests in a happier life. Embedded in every footstep he takes, on odd days when the sun shines or crisp cold days where he’s locked inside, on days where he listens to resentful indignant songs on _Blonde on Blonde_ or cheery, in-love songs on _Rubber Soul._

When he looks in the mirror, his own reflection seems overwhelmingly strange, different than ever before. Surrounded by a deep gray-blue, face tired and lonely with deep purple strokes beneath his eyes, sunken grey cheeks, dry lips. Peculiar and melancholy, like how Van Gogh’s self-portraits turned blue the older he got.

(“It’s the passage of time that’s so important,” Harry had said one evening, sipping at a cup of coffee Louis made for him. He’d spent all night pouring over his book on Impressionism, studying for his exam the following week. Outside, the snow covered the balcony, at least two inches already, and the yellow light of the streetlamps seemed even brighter now, bouncing off of the snow-blanketed streets and painting the cloudy night sky a light grey.

“What’s that?”

“Like,” Harry furrowed his brow, flipping through the pages of his textbook. “With Monet. He’d painted this one cathedral, over and over and over again throughout the day, to like, show how the light changes. How things look in different lights, you know?” He shuffled on the bed, sitting upright in earnest. “Like, in the morning time,” he pointed to the first image, of a yellow-gold cathedral in early morning sunlight, “it looks perfect, yeah? Like, regal. How the architect wanted it to be seen, blue skies and whatever. But then, you know, the second time, it dims. It gets dull. And then, the next time,” he pointed to the same cathedral, sharp and concentrated, seemingly in the harshness that comes before twilight, “it gets detailed. The light lets you see everything, every last bit, you know?”

He sat back, sighing, thumbing the end of the comforter with a shy self-consciousness that comes when you’ve said too much about something. Glancing over at Louis, who watched him, gave him a gentle, intrigued _hmmm_ in response. Instantly, Harry relaxed, continuing.

“I just think… that’s a lot like people, you know? People are the same way. I mean, like we look different in different lights. We act differently, too. Like— like sometimes, you’re like this—” and he points to an impressionist, loosely drawn painting of the cathedral. No definitive lines, no detail. If Louis squinted, all he’d see is a mess of blue and pink. “Like, I don’t know you. Don’t know anything about you. But then sometimes you’re this,” his finger slid to the third painting, sharply detailed, in vivid exposure, “and I feel like… like you’re so real, I could just keep you in my pocket forever.” 

He laughed at himself, wiping at his watery eyes. Hay fever, he used to say, but Louis thinks sometimes Harry got so emotional, so wound up in his own thoughts and his way of romanticizing everything, that he’d start crying out of nowhere. _“She aches, just like a woman. Like Picasso’s Weeping Woman,”_ Louis teased him one night, wiping off stray tears from his cheeks. Harry stared back at him with light, watery green eyes, the color of spring when it’s first born. He’d taken Louis’ hand and swiped his own wet thumbs across Louis’ high cheekbones, saying, “ _Now they’re ours.”_

“D’you know what I mean?” Harry asked, nervous to make sense of his own words.

“Yeah,” Louis said. “Yeah, I do.”  
  


He’d stared long at the paintings, anxiously smoking his fifth cigarette of the hour even as Harry drifted to sleep over his textbook, and wondered into the night what he meant by that— that sometimes he saw Louis as indistinct, as undefined as a heap of thick purple brushstrokes. He must not understand Louis, or maybe he understands Louis too much, maybe he imprints his own self upon Louis’ figure like one might imprint themselves on a character in a book or on the subject of a poem.

Now, he thinks, he knows what he meant.)

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


_Poems from the Seine’s Edge_ gets published on the first day of Spring, on the cusp of Easter Sunday. Louis spends the weekend at his mum’s house in Yorkshire, curled up with his sisters on the couch.

“And you've never even told me her _name,”_ whines his sister Brigitte in his ear. 

“Yeah, Lou, what's her name?” calls someone else— Chloe or Margot.

“Erm…”

“Don't tell us you've forgotten,” his mum chastises from the kitchen, where she’s openly eavesdropping.

“No, no I haven't forgotten.” Louis rolls his eyes and brings Brigitte, his youngest sister, to sit in his lap. He could never forget. These past few months, though masked by the celebration of the book being published, have left a mark on his conscience, filling him with dread to think of Harry all alone in Paris. Or, worse, Harry having moved on, to another Parisian lover, another man who can give him more than Louis could.

“Well? What is it?”

And he thinks to the first time he met Harry, and what he'd written in the margins of his journal: _An angel in the courtyard._

“Angel,” he says, without thinking. He screws his eyes shut, then relaxes, letting go, remembering Harry’s face, his body, the way he really was something of an angel. Otherworldly. 

“That's not a very English name,” says his mother. 

Margot exclaims, “Oh, but I love it! So unique!”

“Chic,” adds Chloe. “Tres chic.”

They giggle around him, still dressed in their Easter clothes and chewing on chocolates and sweets. 

Later, in the kitchen after everyone else has gone to bed, Louis sits with his mum for a late night cup of tea. She’s filtering through the pages of the book, trying to find her favorite.

“I really loved this one,” she says when she lands on it. Just gorgeous:

_It is almost three_

_And we sit, my head in your lap_

_on a park bench._

_Me sorting poems_

_And you watching the people pass by,_

_shaded beneath the trees and outlawed by the sun._

_We are in half-speed._

_The breeze is cool_

_and barely a sound filters up_

_through to my bleary eyes._

_I cannot find a poem,_

_and you cannot stop staring,_

_sorrowfully,_

_at the pregnant women near the lake._

_Your green eyes look different from this angle_

_as you tell yourself to be tender, to be good_

_to stop wishing for things that cannot be._

_In spring we will be free_

_you and me, and anyone else_

_who decides to come along.”_

The tears come somewhat unexpectedly, until he’s sobbing into his mother’s shoulder, loud and shaky. There’s a palm that soothes him down his back, but he laments into the night, into the rest of the week as he returns to London, without anyone to comfort him; without Harry.

  
  


*

**_Watching You Paint_ **

_is even more fun than going to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Cathédrale Notre-Dame, or the cafes and cabarets on the Champs-Elysées_

_or being sick to my stomach and drunk in the Métro_

_partly because in your orange shirt you look like_

_a better happier St Sebastian_

_partly because of my love for you, partly because_

_of your love for copying Renoir_

_partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips_

_around the birches_

_partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on_

_before people and statuary._

_It’s hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still,_

_as solemn, as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it_

_in the warm 4 o’clock light,_

_you pose like the Venus de Milo_

_nude, and breathing_

_drifting towards me like a tree._

_And the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint_

_you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them_

_when they could, instead, paint things that don’t move at all_

_that stay the same, that never leave_

_like the trees, the shadows_

_and the river,_

_and me._

_I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world_

_except possibly for Van Gogh’s self occasionally and anyway_

_he’s in the Musée d'Orsay_

_which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so_

_we can go together for the first time_

_and the fact that you move so beautifully more or_

_less takes care of Futurism_

_just as at home I never think of the ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’_

_or at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me._

_And what good does all the research of the Impressionists do_

_when they never got the right person to stand_

_near the tree when the sun sank?_

_it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience_

_which is not going to go wasted on me which is_

_why I’m telling you about it._

  
  


— _October 1979_

  
  


*

Paris is best in springtime.

Louis finds himself in the same place, on the edge of the city, the very building where he wrote the book of poems clutched in the palm of his hand. He stares up at the balcony where he heard Harry’s sweet voice for the first time over his morning espresso, at the greengrocer beneath who gave them dirty looks each time they came back to the building at night, at the Roman archways that lead to the courtyard. He passes by Pierre’s office, stepping quietly to the center of the courtyard, where children play and birds chirp, and the sunlight seeps through from the sky like the Garden of Eden.

He recognizes Juliette, exuberant in her ways, kicking around a football with a little boy her age. On the stone bench surrounded by freshly planted lavender and poppies, Noelle sits, peeling a Chinese orange, biting her tongue as she digs her tiny nails into the rind of the fruit.

Juliette notices him first, as he stops the ball from flying past him into the street. Nearly toppling over her feet in her espadrilles, she widens her eyes as she recognizes him.

“ _Louis!”_ she shrieks, high pitched and drenched in her lovely accent. She latches onto his calf, hugging him tightly until he scoops her up in his arms. 

“I was getting worried, Juliette. _Peut-être vous souvenez-vous de moi?”_

“Oui, Louis!” she laughs out, before he puts her back on the cobblestone— only to be ambushed by Noelle, grabbing at him and asking for the same treatment, to be swung around in his arms until she giggles and shrieks. 

“ _Vous m'avez manqué,_ Louis!” _We’ve missed you, so much!_

He sets them both down and kneels to their height, grinning at them. “You both look so pretty, _jolies filles.”_ He pats them atop their blonde heads, smiling down at them. “ _Où est_ Harry?”

But they don’t need to say. When he lifts his head, he’s met with the figure of his boy, wrapped up in the charm he knew would never leave. Wrapped up in comfort, in loose denim and a wrinkled striped jumper, in the same espadrilles Louis left outside the door to his rented apartment the day he left this city.

His hair is cut— still long, curling sweetly around his ears, but not as long as Louis left him to be. He’s staring at Louis intensely, like he’s trying to make sure this isn't a dream or a practical joke. When Louis straightens up, the world seems to shift. 

In an instant, Harry crashes into him, wrapping his arms around his neck so tight that he wonders if he’s being suffocated. He closes the embrace, hugging tightly back, rubbing his thumbs into the notches of Harry’s spine.

He feels Harry’s lips at the junction of his jaw and neck, just off from his ear, wetly saying his name. “ _Louis. Louis. Lou. Louis.”_

He murmurs back. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

_And I’m not leaving,_ he thinks. 

When he pulls back, there are tears in Harry’s eyes, making his cheekbones glittery and wet. With the pads of his thumbs, Louis swipes them away, murmuring, “Why are you crying, love? Don’t cry.”

Harry shrugs, shying out of his touch only slightly, eyes downcast. The children— heartless, unknowing creatures— have returned to their activities in the courtyard, Noelle joining in on kicking the half-deflated football around. 

On the stone by their feet, Harry nudges his toe at the overturned book which Louis had dropped in his rush, tilting his head to read it. He gasps, breath hitching in his throat, eyes widening up at Louis.

“You— you brought it.” He stops to pick it up, holding it in his hands, teeth pulling at his bottom lip. “I’d... taken the girls shopping on the avenue, when it came out. Your name, big letters and all, the first book in a shop window for this little bookstore on the block. I really— couldn’t believe my eyes. And the cover—”

“S’from our first day together,” Louis explains. “Of you in the sculpture garden.”

The cover, a polaroid of the sculptures at Rodin’s museum, captured the back of Harry’s head from a far distance, as he stood examining a statue. It’s a beautiful portrait, surrounded by the green birch trees and healthy end-of-summer bushes, the pond filled with algae and stray coins. He’d taken it in an almost serendipitous way; he remembers, a second after the photo was snapped, Harry turning back to smile at him, waving his hand to beckon him forward so he could give his thoughts on the statuary.

Harry presses his forehead into Louis’ shoulder, kissing through the thin fabric of his tee. And Louis doesn't care that they're being this affectionate out in the open; he doesn't care who sees. “I— it sounds horrible, but I thought you wouldn’t come back. Or… or that you would, but it’d be too late.”

He frowns, watching as Harry thumbs through the thick pages in the book, running his fingers along the typography. _All those words,_ Louis thinks, _they’re all for you._

“I’m not going back,” Louis says, unexpectedly. Harry’s eyes widen, blinking up at Louis. “To London, I mean. I’m gonna move here. With you.”

He wraps his hands around Harry’s, still clutching the poetry book. “You’ll be finished with school soon. And after that we can live here. Support each other, like, with our art. Yours will be hung on each and every wall. I’ll be your first commissioner. And... when you get famous from your paintings, like the next Monet, we can move out to the country, or to like Italy or Spain or Greece or something so you have new landscapes to paint. And we can… we can start a family, like you want, and you can be the mum, and I can teach the kids how to play football and like, how to write and talk, and you can teach them how to be kind and wear their hair the right way, and—”

Harry wraps his hands around Louis’ neck, pressing their lips together suffocatingly, smothering him with love that seems neverending, like his heart is full of so much of it, like every billionth atom he’s made up of is a molecule of love to give to Louis and he just creates more and more. When their lips break, the kiss lingers, a sensation he’ll never get used to. Harry nods against his lips, murmuring, “I want that, want that so bad, Lou,” into his mouth, so he can breathe it in and repeat it, and make it theirs, and make it true.

They don’t separate this time. Harry doesn’t let go, and neither does Louis, and they hold each other as tightly as they can. Behind their eyelids, in flashing 24 frames per second, like the New Wave films they watch in the cinema or the way pages turn when you thumb through a book, their life together, their future, so real they can reach out and grab it with their dirty, paint-covered hands.

  
  


*

  
  
  


_How funny you are today in Montmartre_

_like Anna Karina in “Une femme est une femme”_

_and the cathedral leaning a little to the left_

_here I have just jumped out of bed_

_and blue you, here still,_

_accepts me, foolish and free_

_all I want is a room up there_

_and you in it._

_and even the traffic halt so thick_

_is a way for people to rub up against each other_

_and when their arms lock_

_they stay together_

_for the rest of the day (what a day)_

_I go by to check a slide and I say_

_that painting’s not so blue anymore._

_the flat was vacated by a gay couple_

_who moved to the country for fun_

_they moved a day too soon_

_but,_

_oh god it’s wonderful_

_to get out of bed_

_and drink too much coffee_

_and smoke too many cigarettes_

_and love you so much._

_—fin._

  
  


_“Monsieur, you shouldn’t have! I’m just a lady.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I spent a long time pouring into this in between other works (my last fic was.. not very good I apologize it was just practice LOL). It's just basically a longer fic detailing a lot of the romanticization I have of Paris and wanting a love like theirs in my own life.
> 
> As always I tend to have inspiration for my fics so:
> 
> the main inspiration for Louis' character in this and his poetry is Frank O'hara, a poet from the 50s/60s who wrote primarily during the Beat generation. I adore O'Hara's work and have for so long. I think his prose is so simplistic yet captures the essence of being in love so beautifully. Since I see my own work as very stream-of-consciousness writing, I love seeing others' do the same. Plus, O'Hara was gay, and most of his (love) poems detail his relationship with his longtime partner, which I felt was just perfect for Louis/Harry. I also feel as though Louis' writing (in real life) is similar in the way that he tends to be very direct and vulnerable. 
> 
> Impressionism is my favorite form of art, and the part of the city they stay in is Montmartre, which is home to one of the most famous French impressionists Renoir. I felt Harry being immersed in this art form, which was radical in its time, while also finding the romanticism in pretty much everything else in the city was fitting.
> 
> I'd read another fic a while ago about Harry being an au pair, except that fic was for Louis' kids. Plus my mother was an au pair in Paris while in college so I had some background knowledge. I thought it'd be interesting to see Harry in this setting, for kids who aren't his or Louis' at all but some perfect, misfit family that isn't really real. Harry has always sort of played with maternity, mostly I think as a joke, but I think it's so sweet regardless. Him and Louis would be fabulous parents and though I didn't touch on this in the fic, parenthood is a huge issue among LGBT couples, especially the struggle it takes to get to that place. Since this is a period piece I thought it would be fitting to include that couples still struggle with this in their relationships and within society.
> 
> As I'd said in the tags a lot of references to music in this one. Mostly Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and the song Piazza New York Catcher by Belle & Sebastian.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this fic! It's one of my favorite things I've written now. P.S. I know the smut isn't great and it's very much soaked in sappy romantic stuff but... you understand by now.
> 
> Comments are appreciated! So are shares (I don't really have any other platforms to post about this so boosting it means so much to me). 
> 
> Let me know what you think <3


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